Students are encouraged to choose at least one of the below titles to read over the summer.Readers are welcome to post to the Summer Reading blog on the LibraryMedia Center’s website describing their impression of the book and why other students should read it.Conversations about books and reading are encouraged!In addition, this is the second year we’re holding the Multimedia Book Review Contest more information below).Please click on a book cover for a brief description.Enjoy!

Animal Books

Sports

Historical Fiction

Family/Relationships

Action/Adventure

Funny

Dystopia

Mystery

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Classics

Young Adult (more mature content)

Non-Fiction

If you're entering 8th LA Honors:

Animal Books

The One and Only Ivanby Katherine Applegate

When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in adown-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has beenadded to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life.

An Elephant in theGarden by Michael Morpurgo

Lizzie and Karl's mother brings home and then flees Dresden with Marlene, a baby elephant that isslated to be destroyed at the local zoo as the Allied bombing grows closer.

Sports Books

Heat by MikeLupica

Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from socialservices after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rivalcoaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer themproof.

Dairy Queen byCatherine Gilbert Murdock

After spending her summer running the family farm and training thequarterback for her school's rival football team, sixteen-year-old D.J. decidesto go out for the sport herself, not anticipating the reactions of those aroundher.

Historical Fiction

Inside Out and BackAgain by Thanhha Lai

Through a series of poems, a young girl chronicles thelife-changing year of 1975, when she, her mother, and her brothers leave Vietnam and resettle in Alabama.

Code Talker byJoseph Bruchac

After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is auseless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marinesto become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their nativetongue.

Family/Relationships

Wonder by R.J.Palacio

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extremefacial abnormalities, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade ata private middle school in Manhattan,which entails enduring the taunts and fear of his classmates as he struggles tobe seen as just another student.

The Great Unexpectedby Sharon Creech

Orphans Naomi and Lizzie, living in rural America,find their lives intertwined with grown-up sisters Sybil and Nula, from Ireland.

Action/Adventure

JurassicParkby Michael Crichton

An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaurDNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have cometrue. Creatures extinct for eons roam JurassicParkwith their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visitthem—for a price.

Variant by RobisonWells

After years in foster homes, seventeen-year-old BensonFisher applies to New Mexico's MaxfieldAcademy in hopes of securing a brighterfuture, but instead he finds that the school is a prison and no one is what heor she seems.

Funny

Chomp by CarlHiassen

The difficult star of the reality television show,"Expedition Survival," disappears on location in the FloridaEverglades, where they were filming animals from the wildlife refuge run byWahoo Crane's family.

13 Gifts by WendyMass

Tara, a self-proclaimed shrinking violet, tries to break outof her shell by stealing the school mascot, a goat, but she gets caught and isshipped off for the summer to stay with relatives in the quirky town of Willow Falls, which she decidesis as good a place as any to reinvent herself.

Dystopia

Legend by Marie Lu

In a dark future, when North America has split into twowarring nations, fifteen-year-olds Day, a famous criminal, and prodigy June,the brilliant soldier hired to capture him, discover that they have a commonenemy.

Shipbreaker byPaolo Bacigalupi

In a futuristic world, teenaged Nailer scavenges copperwiring from grounded oil tankers for a living, but when he finds a beachedclipper ship with a girl in the wreckage, he has to decide if he should stripthe ship for its wealth or rescue the girl.

Mystery

The Calder Game byBlue Balliett

When seventh-grader Calder Pillay disappears from a remoteEnglish village--along with an Alexander Calder sculpture to which he has felt strangelydrawn--his friends Petra and Tommy fly from Chicago to help hisfather find him.

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd

When Ted and Kat's cousin Salim disappears from the London Eye ferriswheel, the two siblings must work together--Ted with his brain that is"wired differently" and impatient Kat--to try to solve the mystery ofwhat happened to Salim.

Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Wildwood by ColinMeloy

Prue's life shifts from ordinary to extraordinary when herbaby brother is kidnapped by a murder of crows and she must embark into theImpassable Wilderness, a dense forest in the center of Portland, Oregon, withher friend Curtis in tow, where the pair will encounter warring creatures,peaceful mystics, and other dark-minded, powerful figures.

Ender's Game byOrson Scott Card

Young Ender Wiggin may prove to be the military genius Earthneeds to fight a desperate battle against a deadly alien race that willdetermine the future of the human race.

Classics

The Adventures of TomSawyer by Mark Twain

The adventures of a boy growing up in a nineteenth-centuryMississippi River town as he plays hookey on an island, witnesses a crime,hunts for pirates' treasure, and becomes lost in a cave.

Little Women byLouisa May Alcott

The four March sisters weather love and loss during theCivil War.

Young Adult (more mature content)

The Fault in our Starsby John Green

Sixteen year old Hazel, who has cancer, meets Augustus at akids-with-cancer support group and as they fall in love they both wonder howthey will be remembered.

Code Name Verityby Elizabeth Wein

In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupiedFrance and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage, and greatcourage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all thatshe can.

Non-Fiction

Chew on this:everything you don’t want to know about fast food

A look at fast food, what's in it, how it's made, and whatit does to our bodies.

Explores the important role oil plays in United Statesand the world, explains what oil is, and describes how oil has affectedhistory, politics, society, and the economy.

Bomb: the race tobuild and steal the world’s most dangerous weapon

Examines the history of the atomic bomb, discussing thediscovery of the behavior of uranium when placed next to radioactive material,the race to build a bomb, and the impact of the weapon on societies around theworld.

Required Reading for 8thGrade Honors Language Arts

(students must choose one of the following)

The Bomb byTheodore Taylor

In 1944, when the Americans liberate Bikini Atoll from theJapanese, fourteen-year-old Sorry Rinamu does not realize that in two years hewill lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadlythreat.

Fever 1793 byLaurie Halse Anderson

Sixteen-year-old Matilda Cook, separated from her sickmother, learns about perseverance and self-reliance when she is forced to copewith the horrors of the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793.

Within Reach: MyEverest Story by Mark Pfetzer

The author describes how he spent his teenage years climbingmountains in the United States,South America, Africa, and Asia, with an emphasis on his two expeditions up Mount Everest.